


Hair of the Dog

by smolhombre



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguity, Character Study, Depression, Dumb Disaster Gays, Flawed Characters Trying Their Best, Food/Eating Weirdness, Getting Together(ish), Grief/Mourning, I will make Boruto Work for Me no matter what it takes, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Podfic Welcome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Self-Indulgent, The start of a Boruto Fix It Series? Perhaps., Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 21:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19159252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: Kiba is handling everything just fine, fuck you very much.





	Hair of the Dog

“I’ve been thinking of leaving.”

Kiba yawns widely, arching backwards until he hears the  _ clicks _ of his vertebrae popping. Across from him, Shino pokes halfheartedly at some rubbery eggs, pretending to eat only when he’s not slipping bites to Akamaru and Akemaru under the table. Why he bothers trying to maintain the facade of a regular eating schedule anymore is beyond afternoon-napped-and-fed Kiba, much less pink-of-dawn Kiba.

“Is that the kinda shit you really get to leave?” He rubs his eyes until stars explode behind his lids, bright enough to blind him even when his eyes open. Goddamn, but he wishes he could excuse a beer for breakfast. If Shino weren’t here, maybe he could. “And quit feedin’ the fucking dogs, Shino. You want Hana to rip your balls off? They don’t eat table food.”

“I will not. Please don’t bother me with it again. Why? You only ask to cover for your _ self _ when your sister asks  _ you  _ about their diets.”

Kiba waves that very true allegation aside, settling for his coffee if he can’t have a beer and imagining it does the same job. It’s quiet while Shino polishes off the last of his matcha and Kiba takes his chopsticks to the remnants of egg on Shino’s plate. 

“Leave to do what, anyway?” Kiba asks finally. The last bite of his breakfast is cold, the next gulp of his coffee even worse. Shino nudges Akamaru aside with his knee as he rises from the table, grabbing for the porcelain bear mask on the counter. It’s quiet as he slips it on. 

Kiba’s eyes narrow. He’s familiar with the different weights of each of Shino’s silences, and recognizes this one now for what it is.  _ Stalling _ .

“Not the dishes.” Shino flash-steps out of their apartment before Kiba can fling the kunai strapped underneath their dinette in his direction.

_ Asshole _ .

The walk to the Academy is made rougher than usual that morning by the blissful spring weather outside. The sun is too bright and clear, the pollen from the new, green buds cloying. Akemaru sneezes pitifully and grumbles the whole way, Akamaru nipping him more than once in irritation.

On the third reprimand, Akemaru rears back to try and sink his milk teeth into Akamaru’s forearm, yelping when Akamaru shakes him off and a few feet back.

“Knock it off,” Kiba groans. “Iruka-sensei already complains you’re a bad influence on the kids. We’re on thin fuckin’ ice, here.”

Mousy-haired Tohru zooms up from Kiba’s right flank, roughly mussing Akamaru’s head as she barrels into the Academy grounds. “Thin  _ fucking ice _ !” She crows.

Yumi, nearly as wide as she is tall, raises her fist from her lounging spot under one of the shady oaks just inside the gate and parrots: “ _ thin fucking ice _ !”

The glare from the sun makes it hard to tell, but Kiba feels the disapproving weight of Iruka-sensei’s stare pin him from his office window.  

* * *

 

“Kiba- _ sensei _ ,” Cho Cho whines, her mouth around a still bleeding cut between her thumb and index finger, “this  _ sucks _ .”

Inojin flops down to the grass beside her with as much noise as he can muster. He keeps flexing his left hand and between his theatrical wincing is shooting Kiba ill-concealed glares promising injury to his person. Just like his mother, that one.

“When you build up the callouses, it’s easier.” Kiba bends down and rubs one of her hands briskly between both of his own. “Another reason why you need to cool it with the lotion, Cho Cho-chan.” He rubs her other hand before wiping the excess on his pants. “Your aim is bad already.”

“You just don’t like it because of your dumb nose,” she accuses darkly, testing another shuriken between her newly un-slick hands. “And my aim was good enough for you to move me up from the practice shuriken.”

Kiba makes an aborted motion to pinch between his brows. He  _ doesn’t  _ want remnants of the sickly stuff any closer to his nose, and judging by the sharp curl of Cho Cho’s upper lip as she flings her shuriken to it’s target — closer to the center, but not there yet — she counts his visible reluctance as a win. She grabs two shuriken from her pouch this time, weighing them between her fingers, and Kiba idly hopes she doesn’t lose an eye doing whatever it is she’s planning.

“Wearing heavy perfume makes you an easy target even for people who aren’t usually trackers,” Kiba intones mechanically, glancing over her head to see Shikadai and Boruto attempting to sneak off of the training grounds and into the surrounding treeline. He yanks the shuriken from Cho Cho’s fingers, and ignoring her protesting squawk flicks them forward.They slice identical, neat slits in the sleeves of both the boys’ shirts, pinning them to the tree they were just about to clear.

“I’d respect you trying to sneak off if you even tried to be covert about it,” he drawls. “Now I gotta tell your parents you’re truants  _ and _ bad ninja.”

“Ah,  _ shit _ ,” Shikadai groans, eyeing the shuriken venomously as he yanks it out to examine his sleeve. “I don’t wanna hear her complain about having to patch this. Goddamn you, Boruto!”

Boruto, in the middle of babbling near-incoherently to Kiba, turns on his friend with his eyes saucer-wide. “ _ I _ didn’t try to stab you!”

Kiba ambles over in no real rush, putting a heavy hand on the crown of each of their heads and forcing them to meet his gaze.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth, Nara?”

“Do  _ you _ kiss  _ yours _ ?”

“Dumbass!” Boruto hisses, blanched and stepping heavy on Shikadai’s foot. “Shut  _ up _ !”

Kiba’s grip on their hair tightens before he catches himself. He takes a deep breath in through his nose like Tsume first taught him; to focus on the root and weed through the rest, ( _ stop getting distracted, you mutt) _ — the warm plastic from the practice shuriken in sticky, sweaty hands, Cho Cho’s cloying lotion, the yakisoba Metal had for lunch, some still smudged on his chin, the sun, the grass, the dirt — 

He scruffs them both roughly and pushes them back out into the clearing. The soil smells rich and wet with the weekend prior’s rain, and the weight of it clears out everything else. “Alright, you little shits. Laps for everyone. I know you all saw them leaving and didn’t say anything. Get going, I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“You want us to sell out our comrades, sensei?” Sarada had stayed silent as she hammered her target with consistent, neat hits throughout the fuss, but now faces Boruto with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face too reminiscent of Sasuke for Kiba to really tolerate.

“If they were really your comrades, you would have helped them escape. Don’t fake it now because you don’t want to run.” 

Face splotching with color, she starts to say something that gets drowned out by the shrill whistle Kiba sounds, Akamaru and Akemaru howling in merry harmony. The kids start running, the slow and lazy ones getting nipped by the dogs until they speed up.

After a few laps, the kids start challenging each other and laughing, pushing and pulling at the shirtsleeves and weapons pouches they can reach to get ahead like it’s a race. Kiba hops onto one of the stumps in the middle of the grounds and fishes a stone from his pocket to sharpen the shuriken still lodged in the target. He watches his class without really seeing them, blurring until they’re abstracted to just shapes and colors with Kiba himself alongside. Not for the first time, he catches himself genuinely taken aback with his lot, as if he’d woken up in the middle of someone else’s life and was now expected to finish out the scene.

Kurenai had snorted sochu out of her nose when Kiba first told her he was giving up his tokubetsu jounin spot to teach. 

“Yes,” she coughed, wiping her face on the hem of her billowing sleeve, “that sounds about right.”

Mirai was asleep on his lap, chubby hands grabbing for something in her dream until she was able to snag the hitai-ate loose around his neck. Kiba pretended not to notice her sucking and gnawing the corner of it. Across from them, Kurenai mopped up the drink from her worn chabudai before resuming her neat calligraphy on some exploding tags, offering no other explanation.

“Do I want to know what that means, sensei?” He forced out finally, hating how hot his ears felt.

Her knowing smirk was familiarly comforting and irritating. “You were always the gentle one between the lot, Kiba-kun.”

Kiba stewed over the comment the entirety of his walk home to the Inuzuka quarter that night, and catches himself often still stewing when the rest of the world has gone a little quiet. After the war, Kiba’s found that to be most of the time.

The sun is at its highest point when Kiba finally calls them back, having downed half of the flask that takes up permanent residence in his flak jacket’s innermost pocket. The shuriken he’d been working on gleam in the light, a neat line in front of the targets each an exact three inches apart. The brats chatter breathlessly as they collect their weapons from the lineup and pack up their pouches. Kiba waves them off as they begin their half-hearted parting bows, watching them migrate up the hill to the Academy until the bell has long since rung out to silence.

When he gets home, the dishes from breakfast are still in the sink. It’s a matter of principle, even if his stomach protests the smell. He hopes that Shino’s mission wraps up quickly so he won’t have to live with it for long.

Kiba passes the door to Shino’s room en route to his own, already half way through undressing and nudging the dogs out of his way as they beg underfoot for their supper. 

He hopes Shino’s mission wraps up quickly.

* * *

 

He’s visiting his mother when Shino gets home three and a half weeks later. The seal Kiba carries in his chest pocket for the trap on their front door heats up fast and sharp through his shirt before Shino disarms it with a little of his chakra. Some of it is the leeching sunlight, some of it is the sake in his hand, and some of it is just Kiba being a dumbass, but he thinks he can feel a little of Shino’s chakra through the scroll, too, though he’d always been a shit sensor. He  _ thunks _ his head back against the side of his childhood home where he’s crouched in its shade. It feels like an exhale from a place bigger than his body.

He is maybe more drunk than he intended to get. 

Ah, well. Shino needs at least an hour or two after coming home to settle back in his skin, so Kiba can take his time sobering up and not waste the chakra to speed it up. 

He looks back down to his mother’s grave. Even with his nose, he can’t actually smell the spider lilies and camellia from the funeral, but he visits the memory often enough that it’s almost real. The almost-smell tugs him between today and  _ that _ day in the spaces between blinks.

Hana is clan head, Hana is alpha, but she allows Kiba to tie the sash over Tsume’s eyes alongside her at the ceremony when it isn’t really his place to do so.

Kiba squeezes his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his hands against his lids until they burn white inside. The light-darkness and the still of the afternoon and the memory of the tart smelling blooms unmoor him from the specifics of the present and could mean he’s anywhere, or nowhere, which is where he often wishes to be.

“For mama,” Hana murmured, bussing her nose against his temple when they bent over close. Her hands were sweaty. The stems they looped through the knot slipped and broke, petals and pollen catching in Tsume’s still wild hair. He feels the waxy slip against his knuckles still when he should be feeling the grip of a kunai. He feels them when his palms are empty of anything to hold. When he squeezes his fists tight enough to feel the pulse in them like a little heart trapped in his hands, he’s not entirely sure when or where he is, much less wants to be.

“Yeah,” he croaked. Hana’s oldest, Momo, kept her eyes on him the whole time, her lower lip a constant, chapped wobble. Her clan tattoos were still new, her cheeks bruised black and green and chipmunk puffy. Kiba’s throat clenched tight under the scrutiny, as if under a fist. The sun was too bright, his eyes burned red and dry.

“I didn’t cry,” Momo rasped after. The tickmarks in the doorway of Hana’s living room showing her height over the past seven years are eye-to-eye with his own faded ones. She looks like Hana; she looks like Kiba; she looks like Tsume.  “Kiba-jii—” she climbed in his lap and buried her face into the side of his neck, like she was too old to really be doing. “I didn’t cry. Did you see? Like Hanabi-nee-chan said. I was tough.”

Several minutes dragged on before Kiba could force his hand up to rub circles on her back. His neck and shoulder were wet when Hana collected her later, the sky dark and far away from the windows. He smelled salt into the next morning, into the next day, and back into his apartment even when the mourning period was over.

“Kiba.”

Hana nudges him awake with her foot. “You louse, stop loitering around my house. Come help me with the sink, I think it’s clogged — Rie might have shoved that bunny of hers in it again...” 

“Mmmffggghh,” Kiba offers through the Momo-sized weight climbing up his front to sit on his shoulders, her hands tugging at his hair like reins as he rights himself.

Imai is dozing on Hana’s hip, and before Kiba has taken two steps Hana’s passed her off to him as well. Momo nudges her sister’s fuzzy head with her toes, giggling.

“Knock it off,” Kiba scolds absently, batting her bare, dirty foot away.

“Imai will end up like Kiba-jii if you keep that up, Momo.” Hana doesn’t so much spare a glance over her shoulder, but Kiba isn’t fooled. Her back is tight, and she smells a little too much like tart adrenaline and dense, sour cortisol. He’s become a  _ problem. _ He’s made her  _ worry.  _ Again.

Imai tries to bite at Momo’s big toe when she swings her foot forward again. Kiba thinks it’s the least Imai’s earned for her suffering.

* * *

 

“You are remarkably petty in your old age.”

Kiba has been chewed on, climbed on, beat on, and generally harangued for the better part of four and a half hours. Smelling the dishes he’d quarantined in tupperware on Shino’s bedside table while cresting the landing to their floor sends him hurtling through remarkably explicit visions of murder,  and it’s all the restraint he has to not reach out and snap Shino’s neck upon crossing the threshold.

“We had a gentleman’s agreement about the dishes when we moved in,” Kiba grunts, in lieu of getting himself dishonorably discharged. He strips off his jacket and hitai-ate before the door is even locked behind him, his belt and shirt following immediately after. He needs a bath desperately; covered in marker ink and dried drool and the smell of not-his-house and not-his-dogs.

“Ah,” Shino hums, eyeing the strewn clothes on their floor distastefully as Kiba kicks his boots off. “But neither of us are gentlemen.”

“Just do the fucking dishes,” Kiba growls. “Stop making everything so goddamn hard.”

Shino reaches out when Kiba tries to pass him in the hall, his palm flat to Kiba’s shoulder.

“I am not the one making things difficult.”

“Fuck off, I’m not asking for a Face on the Monument, here.”

“You will not pass your instructor’s exam if you keep this up,” Shino says quietly. Shino says everything quietly. “Why do I say so? Hana-san called to tell me she found you there again today.”

“And she made me pay for it already, so you don’t have to,” Kiba says sharply. He pushes forward, but Shino blocks his path, both of his hands now pressed to Kiba’s shoulders. Kiba can hardly feel the buzz of Shino’s kikai under his skin, which means Shino is trying very hard to make it that way, like Kiba were some squeamish civvie.

It fucking  _ rankles _ . 

“I would not punish you, Kiba. Why? You are already punishing yourself for grieving your mother. When you are unable to pass the instructor practical this year, will that be enough misery for you?”

Behind them, Akamaru’s hackles rise. He lets out a thin, keening whine. Between his front paws, Akemaru growls, tail swishing.

“No?” Shino must have been out towards Iwa or Suna during his mission; uneven tans layer over his face and shoulders like jigsaw pieces from different puzzles overlapped and jammed together. The frown on his thin mouth is heavy. His kikai tremor, now, though Kiba doesn’t recognize the pattern. “When, then?”

Even with the windows open for the past three days, Kiba’s smelled those goddamned dishes. From between them now, the sun hangs heavy as an orange gone too ripe, equally foul. It settles like rot into their house, and in its light Kiba only sees Shino for the spaces between them old and sour and gone untouched.

“Maybe I will fail the fucking annual. Nineteen years I’ve been trying to teach you how to be a friend, and for what? I fail all the time.”

Shino allows him to pass, now. 

Kiba stands unmoving under the shower’s spray for two minutes before collapsing face first in his nest of unmade sheets, still sopping wet. When he wakes the tupperware is at the foot of his bed. Shino is gone.

* * *

 

“Yo, Dog-face.” 

Ino flicks a seed from the counter to his temple, backed with a little chakra. It nearly takes him back a step. WIncing, Kiba snaps his fingers and Akemaru launches himself onto her lap to attack her face with wet kisses. Her wide, high cheeks sheen in the fluorescent lights of her store when Kiba finally calls him off. A vein throbs in her forehead. If her son weren’t audibly stomping around upstairs in adolescent pique, Kiba is sure she would make an attempt on his life. Perhaps that’s all the more the pity.

“You must be fucked in the head — really  _ fucking _ fucked, Inuzuka — to try to piss me off when I’m the only one trying to help you,” she pants, scrubbing at her face with her apron.

“If you recall, Yamanaka- _ sama,  _ you called  _ me  _ for a favor.”

“Because that was the only way you would come!” She hisses, darting a glance up the stairs towards Inojin’s room before grabbing Kiba by the shirtfront to pull him close over the counter. “Shino’s cousin Muta-chan came by last week to help pollinate the greenhouse. They haven’t seen him in Aburame square in weeks. Is he okay?”

Kiba only manages to blink at her owlishly for a long, silent beat. “Is Shino okay?” He repeats, too mystified to try and sound otherwise. Shino is always okay. Has Shino ever been even a little unbalanced? Kiba’s face screws up in concentration as he tries to recall. He is usually the fuck-up, between them.

Ino’s eyes narrow to slits. “What did you think I called you here for, Inuzuka?”

“Your husband is on that mission in Kiri and your son is busy going through puberty, so I figured you needed me to lift something heavy.”

Her mouth is a flat line when she takes a pointed step back, releasing his shirt, and grips the lip of her front counter to lift it several inches off the ground with one hand.

“Try again.”

“Shino is fine,” Kiba grunts, pinching the space between his eyebrows. “Good seeing you, Ino. Tell Inojin-kun to practice his kunai more with his right hand, he’s really lazy about relying on the left when he spars.”

Ino flash steps forward and grabs his bicep with enough force Kiba expects blood to pepper his shirtsleeve. “Oh, no you don’t. I own the fucking rumor mill, shithead. You don’t want me to have to pull this shit out of you. Just cough it up.”

“Cough up  _ what _ ?” Kiba hisses, tugging free of her grip. He dares another look up the stairs where muffled, automated beeps filter down from Inojin’s video game. 

“Shino’s visited his father at the insect sanctuary in Aburame square every week, three times a week, since he moved in with you last year. But the past three months? Nothing. He doesn’t eat. He nearly failed his last ANBU physical for it.  _ And _ ,” Ino smooths Kiba’s flak jacket over his shoulders, eyes chips of ice as she leans close and drops her voice to a murmur, “I know he fixed your Academy psych eval before he left for his mission in Iwa last month. Tell me what’s going on or Ibiki-sensei will have him pulled from the active duty list.”

There’s no point trying to hide his shock from Ino, who would sense it anyway. Maybe to reciprocate, she doesn’t bother to hide her answering frown from him.

“You really didn’t ask him to?”

“You  _ thought I would _ ?” He growls. “I don’t need my fucking headcheck fixed in the first place.”

“Kiba…” Ino’s hands are gentle, now. “You’ve had it hard. I — we thought that —”

“ _ We _ ?”

“...Shika saw the flag on Shino’s ANBU file after his annual. When he asked me to look into him and I saw the — well. We just thought he was trying to protect you. He’s been in longer than most. Almost longer than Kakashi-sama was. That changes your perspective on things. On people.”

There is not enough air in the flower shop, perhaps not in the whole of Konoha, and perhaps not in the whole of Fire Country. 

“Placements in ANBU are Hokage-level confidential, Yamanaka. I don’t know who told you Shino was in, but I don’t know anything about it either way.”

Akamaru and Akemaru lunge at Ino from either flank, and the momentary distraction is all Kiba needs to bolt.

* * *

 

“How rare to see you here this time of night, Kiba-kun.”

God _ dammit. _

“Aburame-sama.” Kiba dips into a brief, shallow bow. Only part of it is to hide his grimace. “I was looking for Muta-chan. Is she out on a mission?”

“To my knowledge, my niece is currently entertaining a gentleman caller and hopefully aiding in my acquisition of grandchildren to spoil.” Above Shibi’s wide, high collar, the corner of his mouth only just curls up in a wry smirk. “Unless that was supposed to be you?”

The streetlamps in Aburame square are spread out farther and burn dimmer than elsewhere in the village in deference to how sensitive they are to light, and still with the sunset a dishwater-lilac at their shoulders Shibi wears the mirrored black sunglasses of the other Aburame milling about the street.  Perhaps Kiba has been spoiled seeing Shino without his so often that he’s grown rusty reading expressions with them on, but he thinks Shibi looks a little tired. 

“It would be news to both of us, if so.”

“I presume you will deny my offer to stay for tea?”

Kiba flinches, but Shibi spares him having to answer. “Permit me to then escort you out of the quarter.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your plans,” Kiba says quickly.

“Luckily for us both, it will not.”

Kiba squints, one hand fisted in Akamaru’s scruff. He barely has to scent the air at all for a frown to anchor his mouth. “You’re lying.”

“Yes,” Shibi nods simply, hands in his coat pockets. “One of the few real perks of being clan head is to do so with some flagrancy. Let’s walk.” 

To his credit, Shibi gives Kiba three and a half minutes of silence to collect himself before he speaks. 

“My son is well?”

Kiba lets out a ragged sigh. “To my knowledge.”

“An unusually indirect answer from an Inuzuka.”

“He’s been away.” 

“ANBU takes up most of his time, but not all,” Shibi offers reasonably. “You have typically been there for the rest. Has that changed?”

Akamaru  _ whuffs _ loudly at his side, and Kiba takes a deep breath in of the square; wet-moss, not quite green but still alive and unbrown, something cool and dark and sharper than water. It tinges high in his nose like looking up at the sun does. It’s like Shino, but not as  _ much _ . “Why do we even bother pretending that ANBU assignments are secret?”

“If we don’t have pretense, Kiba-kun, what else will we sell the civilians?”

Kiba snorts. “I used to think you were so uptight as a kid. I can’t believe I didn’t realize you had a sense of humor until we made jounin.”

“Tsume-dono got a certain, special joy of making me out to be a troll. It seems Hana-dono has carried on this tradition with her own daughters. I’ve come to appreciate it as a gesture of some affection.”

Kiba listens to the weighty, wet thump of his heart in his ears until his throat is loose enough to speak. “She got a kick out of that, you know. You calling her - _ dono _ like she was some noble like you.” 

“It was only right for someone of her character.” If Kiba didn’t know Shino so well, he wouldn’t be able to pick out the hesitation in Shibi’s next words. “Her birthday is approaching. Are you sure you won’t stay for tea?”

He scrubs a hand on his face, surprised by the stubble there. When was the last time he thought to shave? “I have to be at the Academy early tomorrow. We’re starting  _ bunshin _ practice for the ones on track to graduate.”

Shibi stops in his tracks, and Kiba is forced to do the same. He jams one hand into the thick scruff of Akamaru’s neck, the other in his coat pocket. Akemaru nudges Kiba’s calf with his muzzle.

“It would have been easier if she died in the war, Kiba-kun. All soldiers expect one mission to be their last. But her death isn’t any less because it was caused by illness. Your guilt in grief only prolongs the suffering. One day you will think of Tsume-dono and smile without realizing you aren’t hurting for it at all, but you must forgive yourself first for wishing different circumstances upon her.” Shibi barely pauses, here, but Kiba hears it anyway. “For everyone, consider it. For yourself, at least, and for your mother.”

His ears are swallowed up in a roaring  _ woosh _ ; he’d only seen a proper swarm once, during Pein's onslaught on the village, but before he can realize he’s not surrounded in a buzzing, whining cocoon Kiba could swear he is. 

Akamaru nips his wrist and Kiba releases the clenching grip he had on his neck like the fur burned. His stomach roils, and his feet tingle numb inside his boots. Distantly, Kiba wonders if he’s upright.

“Oh.”

Shibi doesn’t move or speak for a long beat. “I did try to invite you in before dropping this on you.”

“You did.” Kiba clears his throat, glancing around them and trying to grasp at anything to moor him to the present that’s not Shibi’s words. Aburames were discreet as a rule, and no passerby, even the civilians, appear to be eavesdropping. Good. That was good. His chest feels light, scooped clean with a gaping hole. His throat is tight. What were they talking about? Why? 

“Look, I— I really gotta go. I’ll tell Shino — I. Well. I’ll see what I can do about Shino.”

They’ve approached the edge of the Aburame compound, the streetlights now buzzing loud and bright overhead where their block meets the farthest-out homes of the Nara’s. The new light cuts shadows around them that are unnaturally still and awake. If Kiba keeps walking straight, he’d trudge through it all into the forest that predates even Lord First. The light doesn’t reach the ground there, and Hinata said Neji even had trouble not getting lost in it. It’s a suddenly tempting offer.

“Thank you for walking with me, Kiba-kun. Please enjoy the rest of your evening.” Shibi ducks his head politely. “Consider my offer as standing, if you decide to rethink your decision.”

Shibi leaves him under the shadow of the nearest lightpost without another word, in unbearably polite deference to the plates of the earth shifting under Kiba’s feet.

* * *

 

It’s anticlimactic to find Shino on their couch upon returning to their apartment. He doesn’t even have the decency to look any different under the weight of everything — maybe thinner, but Kiba’s been not-noticing that for weeks. Shino’s always been lanky. His hair is still frizzy, his slim knuckles dry and peeling. In those ways, they could be back at the Academy together.

His research journal is on the low table in front of him, but it’s not opened. Instead, Shino is sprawled, dead asleep, with his mouth open and his head held at an angle that must be nothing short of agony. Several kikai make lazy figure eights around him, and between his near inaudible snoring Kiba feels more than hears the low, slow tremor of his colony. It’s the same hum that lulled Kiba to sleep when they were genin, the same that he curled around the long, loud night the war ended, not quite able to believe they were both still alive. A murmured swell like a tide rose up to his ear and cheek where it pressed to the back of Shino’s shoulder, the dark a promise around them that smelled of blood and filth and salt. It smelled like living, and the tremor burrowing from underneath Shino’s skin into his own felt like living, too.

Kiba watches him for several long seconds. Shino must know he’s not alone by now, but he continues to doze, or at least feign it.

He wouldn’t know what to say, anyway, just yet. And if Shino wanted to talk, surely he’d open his eyes and just say it. Of all the ways they’re different, a reluctance to speak their mind hasn’t ever made the list.

As Kiba sets about making the dogs dinner, taking care to be as silent as possible in respect to Shino’s ruse, he keeps thinking of the lines bracketing Shibi’s mouth, and the thin barely-arches of his eyebrows that are the same as Shino’s. Shibi doesn’t seem that old anymore, now that Kiba himself is old enough to look him in the eye.

He grabs a beer from the fridge in lieu of dinner. When he falls asleep, it’s to the noise of Shino finally rising from the couch and shuffling towards the kitchen.

* * *

 

“When you said you were gonna leave...where did you land with that?”

Remembrance Day has, thus far, sucked ass. As usual, the bars are packed beyond even standing capacity, leaving Kiba and Shino stood shoulder to shoulder on the tiny balcony of their apartment to nurse a flat beer each. After the ceremony at the Hero Stones, the village splits into two halves; one into their homes for a private misery, the other to the square around Hokage Tower for a public one, punctuated by copious booze and the fireworks that begin when night finally falls and the day is blessedly close to being over until the next year. 

It’s a shitty day every time it comes around and Kiba is alive to experience it, but more so than usual this go-around for the fact that Shino and Kiba are not speaking for the first time since their first fight in the Academy as pre-genin. 

“As you said, it is not a simple thing to leave.” 

“But you want to.”

Shino doesn’t speak for a long minute. Below them, Himawari rolls her pants up to her knees and leaps into the fountain in front of the Tower to harass the koi swimming inside of it. Inojin perches on the stone lip to watch her, summoning a net on his sketchpad to keep them herded close for her inspection.

Beside him, Shino’s kikai hum in the building dark, lacing together with the bubble of the water and mill of the crowd underneath. 

“I do want it.” He takes a long, un-Shino swig from his beer. “What do you want?”

Kiba thinks about Shibi’s cool gaze in Aburame square and the bruise on his arm from Ino’s biting grip. He thinks of coming home from Tsume’s funeral and Shino helping him bathe and dress and eat at least every other day, and the one lingering press of Shino’s hand to the nape of his neck when Kiba first stumbled in, his forehead pressed to the hollow of Shino’s shoulder. He thinks of why that only happened once, and never again.

“Do you want out before they let you go? Is that what this is?” Kiba says instead, because he loves to suffer if he loves anything.

Shino is marble stiff beside him. The kikai give a brief, shrill whine before going unnaturally still, which is how Kiba knows he’s for once taken Shino genuinely off guard. 

He turns to prop his hip against the railing, arms crossed over his chest. “What — uh. What’s going on, Shino?”

“That is not a fair question to ask of me. Why? You aren’t willing to answer it yourself, when I try to pull it out of you.”

“That’s not fair,” Kiba frowns. “I’m not — nothing is wrong with  _ me _ .”

Shino all but slams his beer down on the railing. “What are you saying, Kiba? You’ve never had an issue being direct before.”

A headache blooms between Kiba’s eyes, icepick charp, and he downs the rest of his beer trying to deaden the edges of it to no avail. “Fuck, man. I’m just asking if you’re alright. You’re...everyone is— your fucking dad, Shikamaru, goddamn Ino —”

“You?”

Kiba stops short. “What? I—of. Fucking I’m  _ asking _ , ain’t I?”

“And why are you asking?”

“Do I fucking need a — you’re my —  _ what the fuck _ , Shino?”

It’s not a compelling argument. Shino’s mouth purses on a frown; he looks old and mean and not like Shino at all. His eyes are bloodshot from just half a beer, his sunglasses strewn in the living room in a show of masochism for the coming fireworks. Every year he does this and is in bed with a migraine the next morning, like he’s proving a point.

_ I lived, but I am suffering so you know that I’m grateful for it. _

Kiba chokes a bit on the errant thought. Shino steps closer. Kiba juts his chin out, offering him the sucker punch if he’s ready to make it.

“Did you fix my goddamned psych eval?”

“Did you think you could pass it like you are right now?”

He has a fist in the front of Shino’s shirt before he can stop himself. The smell of their detergent washes up, the warm and alive with the scent of Shino under it, but it’s lost on Kiba. The edges of his vision spot black, and he’s breathing harder than when he used to take Lee up on his offers to train.

“ _ Fuck _ you. Fuck you for  _ fucking _ —”

Shino pushes forward, and Kiba’s back hits the wall. It hasn’t bothered him since they were fifteen, but Kiba suddenly hates the three inches he has to look up to meet Shino’s eyes.

“You think something is wrong with me?” Shino is breathing just as heavy as Kiba, his thin, firm chest rising to meet the back of Kiba’s knuckles through the cotton of his shirt. “You couldn’t possibly know. Why? Your head is too far up your own  _ ass _ .” 

Kiba’s ears ring. Shino plows on. 

“You think being miserable will prove how much you mourn Tsume-san. You want things and put yourself in places where you must look at them every day and wallow in not having them. You only want to speak to me because you don’t want to think about what’s happening with you. If you fail at your job, and you fail at — if you  _ fail _ , you feel you will be right about everything and deserve your suffering. Well, I refuse to let you be right.”

Shino’s hands clench and unclench by his sides, in time with the thrum of the kikai that sound close even to Kiba’s ears. He never stumbles over his words, which is somehow more of a punch to the gut than anything he’s actually said. 

“So what? You fucking — you kill yourself trying to  _ fix _ me? You get dishonorably discharged or try to fail your own fucking qualifiers to prove a point? You’ve wanted ANBU since we were genin. You —” Kiba bites the inside of his cheek and wants very suddenly to die. “You think I want to fuck that up for you? Waste your work?”

“Kiba,” Shino grinds his teeth so hard the muscles in his jaw flutter. Kiba hasn’t released the fist in his shirtfront. “What do you want?”

From below them, Himawari shrieks gleefully over the sound of vigorous splashing. Kiba smells the acrid ink and flint powder on the explosive tags being set up in neat rows in front of Hokage Tower. 

“I want —” The column of Shino’s throat is eye-level, available, and sheens with sweat where his pulse thumps heavy and fast. “I want you to fuck off.”

The  _ fizzbang _ of the first firework cracks the sky open as Shino stumbles back. His expression is so open and surprised Kiba can’t stand to look at it.  

Kiba reaches for the back of Shino’s shirt right as Shino reaches for the sliding door. 

“Wait,” he croaks. “Shit, Shino — I. Don’t go.”

He doesn’t turn around, but he doesn’t turn out of Kiba’s grip either. 

“It’s what you want.”

“It’s not.” Kiba’s voice is so thin and soft it doesn’t sound like his voice at all. “You know it’s not.”

Two more fireworks go off before Shino speaks again. “I know it’s not.”

Shino does look different. Kiba doesn’t know how he hadn’t seen it before. His shoulders slope heavy and low where they haven’t before. Kiba doesn’t realize he’s pressed his forehead to the tight knot between them until he’s done it. How much is the same as it’s always been between them? How much has he fucked up? How much has changed?

“This is my fault.”

“Hn.”

Kiba’s upper lip curls. “You don’t have to agree that fast.”

Shino’s hand falls from the door handle. Slowly, he finds Kiba’s hand, loose on Shino’s hip, and covers it with his own.

“I trust you with my life,” Shino says. It feels sudden, but if Kiba thinks back it probably isn’t. “It would not be a waste. Why?” Shino takes a shaky breath Kiba feels through his back. “If it’s you, I cannot waste it.”

“What do you want, Shino?”

“You know.”

The hand on Shino’s hip clenches tight. Shino doesn’t buckle under it at all. Shino bears the shit Kiba puts him through. Shino has always bore the weight. How long has Kiba made him? How can Shino stand to do it?

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He releases the grip on Shino’s shirt and wraps his arm around Shino’s front, hardly daring to believe himself. But if Shino can do the hard things, maybe Kiba can, too. “It’s been this. Shino, I’m shit at — but it’s this.”

Another firework goes off behind them, and Kiba feels Shino wince in his grip. “Let’s go inside.”

The door slides shut behind them, but it feels like an opening.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!! This one was a struggle to get out...I had to stop picking at it eventually, so I thought I better just post it and try to move on rather than drive myself crazy with it. Feedback is much appreciated :)
> 
> Many thanks to [Vii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/viiisenya/pseuds/viiisenya) for reading over this and tolerating my annoying flailing about it. :)
> 
> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://smolhombre.tumblr.com) about the embarrassingly lame playlist I made to write this to lmao. 
> 
> Catch you on the flipside! :) <3


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